Goofs for
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: The police officer that escorts Sloane and Cameron away from the float that Ferris is on loses his jacket in an overhead shot.
  
  
• Continuity: The rear view mirror disappears when Jeanie is speeding home.
  
  
• Continuity: The seatbelt as Jeanie jumps out of the car.
  
  

• Factual errors: Star Wars (1977) music incorrectly credited as "Stars Wars" in end credits. Also "Danke Schoen" incorrectly credited as "Danke Shoen".
  
  
• Continuity: During the Star Wars driving scene when the two parking garage attendants jump the Ferrari, the sky is full of clouds and then cloudless a moment later.
  
  
• Continuity: Cameron's hair changes while talking to Mr. Rooney on the telephone.
  
  
• Continuity: When Rooney is calling Mr. Petersen, his assistant dials the number and Rooney picks up his phone. He is still holding it when the assistant dials the next number, but in the next shot he picks up the phone again.
  
  
• Factual errors: Mr. Rooney's car is ticketed for being next to a fire hydrant. That hydrant is a wet pipe hydrant, but Chicago (being a cold weather city) has a dry pipe system.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Ferris, Sloan, and Cameron pick up the Ferrari at the parking garage you can see the camera and its reflection in the window directly behind Ferris and Cameron.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: At the very end when the credits are rolling but the movie continues, Rooney boards a school bus. When a student hands him a gummy bear, a mike is visible in the upper left of the screen.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: When Jeanie pulls up to the field in her car and she says "I hate him." You can see the reflection of the boom mic and the camera in her slightly rolled up window.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Ed Rooney first goes to the house to search for Ferris, you see a gold colored pot and a reflection of a crew member in it.
  
  
• Continuity: As Ferris sits in the Jacuzzi his hair is dry, and parted to the left. But before jumping into the pool to get Cameron, his hair is soaked.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ferris is on TV catching the foul ball there are two pitchers warming up in the bullpen. However, when we cut to the conversation at the ballpark there are no such pitchers to be found.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: After Ferris picks up Sloane and starts talking to the camera you can see the shadow of a crew member moving around on the car's door.
  
  
• Continuity: The number of times Sloane picks up her water glass in the restaurant after Ferris toasts her.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: During the Chicago fly by at the start of the movie, the helicopter taking the film is clearly seen reflected in one of the skyscrapers.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Ferris saves the drowning Cameron, Cameron is kicking along with Ferris. However, Cameron's reaction later implies he was faking it.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: At the beginning of the movie, when it's about 7 or 8 in the morning, a clock in the high school hallway says 1:40, but it's not unusual for school clocks to be unreliable.
  
  
• Continuity: The movie takes place in spring, yet at Cameron's dad's garage, some of the leaves on the trees are changing color, as they would in autumn. This is because it was filmed during the fall, and the leaves were hand painted green for the shot.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ferris is running home, his shoes change from dress shoes (saying goodbye to Sloane) to canvas tennis shoes (running down the sidewalk) to running shoes (through his neighbor's house and back yard) and back to dress shoes (confronted by Rooney at the back door).
  
  
• Continuity: When Ferris and Sloane kiss goodbye, her fingernails change from short and unpolished to long and manicured.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ferris is on the phone in his bedroom talking to both Cameron and his dad, a Pepsi can is sitting next to a glass of Pepsi. A few seconds later the can is no longer there.
  
  
• Continuity: When Principal Rooney parks his car in front of Ferris' home, he parks at a slight angle, pointing away from the curb. The next time the car is shown, it is snug to the curb, facing directly ahead.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ferris is playing the sounds on his keyboard, there is a tape sitting to his left. It changes positions, disappears and reappears.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Ferris, Sloane, and Cameron are driving home in the Ferrari, Ferris changes lanes, but never turns the steering wheel.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end, when Ferris kicks off his shoes before jumping in the bed, he kicks off three shoes.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: A reflection of a camera can be seen in the handle of the fridge near the beginning of the film.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning, when Ferris is explaining that this day is his 9th sick day, he fiddles with his stereo's equalizer, when we next see it, the EQ is back to its position before the close-up.
  
  
• Continuity: When Cameron first falls into the pool, his chair stays on the diving board; in the next shot it can be seen in the water behind him as he sinks. When Ferris dives in to save him, the chair is back on the diving board.
  
  
• Continuity: When Sloane is speaking with Mr. Rooney outside the school, you can see a very blue sky with puffy clouds reflected in the doors. When the sky is shown in other shots in the same scene the sky is a much lighter blue and the clouds are flat and much thinner.
  
  
• Continuity: At the end when Rooney gets on the bus, he walks over a grass easement. When the bus finally pulls away, it is shown from the back. The sidewalk is next to the road.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Late in the movie where Ferris races his parents home, an orange hook and protective tape are visible on the hood of the father's car as he drives behind the old lady. The hook was used to secure the camera onto the hood for filming.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane are driving into the city, they are going south on Lake Shore Drive. They are supposedly doing this before noon, yet the sun is shining well from the west. before noon, it would still be in the eastern sky.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: While Ferris is singing Danke Schoen, Cameron and Sloan are walking in front of the "Flamingo" sculpture. A blonde extra walks behind them. About two seconds after she leaves the frame on the left, she reappears and watches the filming. When she realizes that she is back on camera, she quickly exits to the left again.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: In the bathroom at Chez Quis, the boom mic is reflected at the top of the mirror.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Jeanie is speeding down the street, her mother is hollering at her but she is sitting still and appears to be perfectly calm.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ferris is singing on the float the camera pans the crowd where the exact same group of people can be seen twice.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When Ferris is running down the street near the end of the movie, there is a palm tree in the background. This is because the scene was actually shot in Long Beach, California.
  
  
• Continuity: In the hot tub, the Pepsi can moves between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: The speedometer shown while Ferris is starting the car in the parking garage is not the same speedometer shown at other times (e.g. when the attendants are flying through the air).
  
  
• Factual errors: When Ben Stein is taking attendance, he calls "Adams, Adamly, Adamowski, Adamson ..." However, Adams is after Adamowski in alphabetical order.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Ferrari is being 'rewinded', the rear car tires actually move forward.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: Although the girls in the restaurant are playing a Karate Champ arcade game, the sound effects played are *not* from Karate Champ, but actually from Pac-Man.
  
  
• Continuity: The dummy in Ferris' bed would not "sit up" when Jeanie flings the door open considering the way the string is attached (shown in earlier scene when mom peaks in on him).
  
  
• Continuity: The part in Ferris' hair switches sides.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Cameron is being rescued by Ferris in the swimming pool, you can see one of the weights, that held him at the bottom of the pool, around his stomach as he is being pulled back up.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When they are trying to move back the wheels on the Ferrari to make the speedometer go back, the three of them go into the garage and are standing by the car you can clearly see that three of the wheels are not moving and yet the car in running in reverse.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The contraption Ferris made to fool his parents is a total shank. The trophy, that acts as counterweight is doing absolutely nothing. In one shot this is demonstrated as the trophy and the body-model start and stop at different times. They also move at different intervals.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the parade while Ferris is singing "Twist and Shout", several members of the marching band are not playing marching-style instruments.
  
  
• Continuity: The trophy that was used to "lift" the dummy is nowhere to be seen when Ferris gets back home at the end of the movie.
  
  
• Continuity: The baseball glove the ball lands in, is nowhere to be seen, before or after Ferris throws the ball at the stereo.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Ben Stein is billed as an Economics teacher, however a still frame of Ferris's schedule on Rooney's computer (when Rooney is checking Ferris' absences) shows that he doesn't take an economics class.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The economics teacher (Ben Stein) references the "Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act," but it's actually known as the "Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act."
  
  
• Continuity: When Jeanie is talking to the Boy in Police Station, his hair is flat, but when the camera comes back to him, his hair is sticking up and messy and it continues through the whole shot
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): In Sloane's English class, the word "dispair" is written on the blackboard, a misspelling of the word "despair."
  
  
• Continuity: When Mr. and Mrs. Bueller come home at the end of the day, they find tons of flower arrangements for Ferris in the doorway. But no one was home all day to receive them, except (very briefly) Jeannie. Indeed, Mrs. Bueller was home at lunch tine and there were no flowers then.
  
  
• Continuity: The weather changes during Tom Bueller's drive home from work. Just before turning onto the street where he encounters the old woman driving erratically, you can see behind him that the sky is overcast. When he turns onto the street, the sky is blue.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Rooney arrives at Ferris' house he is wearing a suit jacket and long sleeve shirt. Rooney rings the doorbell several times in the scene. One close-up of a doorbell ring shows a man's very hairy arm ringing the doorbell, certainly not Rooney's arm as he's wearing a suit jacket and long sleeve shirt.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane are in the garage and discover the Ferrari odometer is not going backwards, we see the tachometer needle at its resting zero point, even though the engine is running with constant throttle applied.
  
  
• Factual errors: The 6500 RPM redline is visible, but that Ferrari model did not have a redline marking.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Katie Bueller is complaining to her husband, she indicates that Jeanie received two speeding tickets, though she was only pulled over for speeding once. However, she probably received additional tickets for running the stop sign and/or evading the cop trying to pull her over. So her mother probably incorrectly referred to all Jeanie's tickets as speeding tickets.
  
  
• Plot holes: When Ed Rooney is picked up by the school bus, it is sometime around 6pm. This scene was originally intended to take place around the time the students would be coming home from school. (See trivia.) However, though 6pm is too late for kids to be just getting out of school, it is also possible this bus was returning from a field trip or other extracurricular activity. Additionally, at the time of year the movie is set, near the end of the school year, the sun would still be out at 6pm.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Cameron is sitting in his car deciding whether or not to go pick up Ferris, a crew member can be seen walking around behind the left side of the house.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When the exteriors of the Bueller Home are shown as Mr. Rooney tries to break in, there is a Bird of Paradise growing in the garden. The Bird of Paradise is a tropical plant species that would not survive outdoors in Chicago, where the film takes place.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ferris is singing in the parade, the carnival float changes position numerous times between shots. In one shot it will be almost directly in front of the entrance to the financial exchange, in the next it is some distance further along the road, with the financial exchange sign only just visible.
  
  
• Factual errors: When Ferris is running home at the end of the film, the shadows from the cars show that the sun is fairly high in the sky. However, when he stops to introduce himself to the sunbathers the shadows show that the sun is about to set. Furthermore, no one would sunbathe at that hour and the two women are not even facing the sun.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: The position Ferris' parents are standing in when they are next to his bed right after Ferris jumped in his bed would enable them to see the torso of the dummy Ferris used to impersonate himself during his day out.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene were Ferris is trying to take off the mileage on the car, Solon's hair change from scene to scene.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene where Jean is in the police station, the druggie is staring at her. In the very next shot, he is looking away. Then in the next shot he's staring at her again.
  
  
• Errors in geography: During the scene where Rooney's car is being towed away, you can see a palm tree in the background as the tow truck is driving down the street.
  
  
• Continuity: When Cameron kicks in the front of the Ferrari he breaks the glass on the front turn signal, yet in the following scenes the floor under the car is clean with no broken glass visible.
  
  
• Continuity: When Cameron is spoofing Sloan's father, Ferris calls in and Grace answers his call on line three. After Rooney speaks with Ferris, the scene cuts to a shot of his phone. Ferris is now on line two.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Ferris' dad is in the car next to Ferris as they wait on the street, it shows Dad reading a newspaper that has a "Rally Around Sick Youth" article on the front page. Supposedly, there is no way the article could have made it to press in the middle of the day, let alone it being reported early enough to be printed for the same-day edition. However, Simone Adamley in the Economics class gave a lengthy explanation of Ferris's absence due to being sick at Baskin-Robbin's the night before. This "news" could've easily been reported and printed in time for the morning edition of the newspaper.
  
  

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